Modern Language Studies

Swift and Travel LiteratureAuthor(s): Arthur SherboSource: Modern Language Studies, Vol. 9, No. 3, Eighteenth-Century Literature (Autumn,1979), pp. 114-127Published by: Modern Language StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3194285 .Accessed: 23/10/2011 14:37

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Swift and Travel Literature

Arthur Sherbo

If Jonathan Swift had contemplated buying a copy of the newly published Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World in Four Parts By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships, printed in 1726 in London for "Benj. Motte, at the Middle Temple-Gate in Fleet-street,"' in quickly scanning the the work he would have noted prefatory remarks from "The Publisher to the Reader," signed by one Richard Sympson, a full and very informative table of contents, and an appended "Letter from Capt. Gulliver to his Cousin Sympson." Further investigation would have revealed the pres- ence of four maps and two diagrams, rather modest paraphernalia compared to other more lavishly illustrated travel literature but not out of keeping with the modest format of these Travels. Swift already possessed a small body of travel literature, including the two principal collections, those of Richard Hakluyt and Samuel Purchas. He also had in his library at his death Bernier's Voyages, 2 vols., 1699; The Voyage of John Huyghen Van Linschoten to the East Indies, the 1598 translation from the Dutch; the 1634 folio edition of Sir Thomas Herbert's Travels, profusely illustrated; Lionel Wafer's New Voyage and Description of the Isthmus of America, 1699; a volume entitled Voyages and Discover- ies in South America, published in 1698; and Addison's "Travels Through Italy," i.e. his Remarks on Italy. Two of these books have annotations in Swift's hand: Bernier's Voyages and Herbert's Some Years Travaile...into Afrique and the Greater Asia.2 A manuscript catalog of Swift's books compiled on August 19, 1715 reveals that he also had copies of "Le blanc's Travells," which I take to be Vincent le Blanc's The World Surveyed, or the Famous Voyages and Travailes of Vincent le Blanc, originally published in French in 1648 and translated into English in 1660 by one Francis Brooks, as well as Captain William Dampier's "Travells," 1698, i.e. the third edition of the New Voyage Round the World.3 The "State of Turk. Empire. 1686," listed among the octavos, is almost surely Sir Paul Rycaut's The Present State of the Ottoman Empire, sixth edition, 1686, octavo. And hidden among the "Libri Classici et Philologici in Folio" is "Nieuhovii Legatio Britannica ad Chinam. Amsterd. 1668," which turns out to be Jan Nieuhot's Legatio Batavica ad Magnum Tartarei Chamum Sungteium, modernam Sinae Imperatorem. Swift borrowed a paragraph (p.48), "with alterations, from A New Voyage to the East Indies, by 'William Sympson' (1715)" for Gulliver's Travels. And in a list of books Swift was reading in 1697 and 1698 there are five unidentified books, at least two of which are travel literature, with the other three possibly falling into that category: Voyage de Maroc [Morocco], Voyage de Syam, Histoire d'Aethiopie, Histoire de Chypre [Cyprus], and Histoire de Cotes de etc.4 I tenta-

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tively identify the Voyage de Syam as the Journal du Voyage de Siam Fait en 1685 & 1686, by the Abbe de Choisy, published in 1687, or Guy Tachard's Voyage de Siam des Peres Jesuites, Paris 1686 and Amster- dam, 1688. The Histoire d'Aethiopie is almost surely the Nouvelle Histoire d'Abissinie, ou d'Ethiopie, Paris, 1684, a translation of Hiob (or Job) Ludolf's Latin history. All this, of course, is clear evidence of Swift's familiarity with travel literature.

Some attempts have been made to show the influence on Gulliver's Travels of certain pieces of travel literature not known to have been in Swift's possession at any time. A plausible case has been made for Swift's knowledge of H. Hamel's Account of the Shipwreck of a Dutch Vessel which he could have read in the third miost famous collection of travel literature in this period, that published by the brothers Awmsham and John Churchill in 1704 under the title A Collection of Voyiages and Travels in four folio volumes.5 Far less plausible is the suggestion that Swift owed something to E. Kaempfer's History of Japan, published the year after the date of Gulliver's Travels and thus necessitating Swift's access to the manuscript of the English translation.6 Perhaps the most persuasive of these attempts to trace the influence of travel literature on Swift is R.W. Frantz's suggestion that the Yahoos are the literary des- cendants of the Hottentots, about whom a number of voyagers had written accounts.7 Surprisingly enough, in view of the fact that Swift usually employs recognizable literary genres as vehicles for his satires and adopts the language and conventions of those genres, there has been relatively little more written on the possible influence of travel literature on Gulliver's Travels.

The most ambitious attempt to show how one work of travel literature owned by Swift left its imprint on Gulliver's Travels is the chapter entitled "Cousin Gulliver" in Willard H. Bonner's Captain Wil- liam Dampier, Buccaneer-Author (Stanford, 1934). Professor Bonner's argument is too long and circumstantial to analyze here, and I can only suggest now and hope to demonstrate later that much of what he thinks peculiar to Dampier and Swift was pretty much conmmonplace in travel literature. One or two examples must suffice at this time. Professor Bonner states quite forthrightly that "Gulliver was an unusual sailor, being educated beyond the average" (p. 165), thus setting up a compari- son with Dampier. Actually, most travel literature was written by men of some learning, some of them surgeons like Lemuel Gulliver who, despite his promotion to Captain, was not, and should not be described as, a sailor. And although Professor Bonner was w-riting after publica- tion of Franz's article of the Yahoos and the voyagers (note 7 above), with its eminently sensible warning against any attempt to select a single description of the Hottentots as a source, he tries to make a case for Dampier's account of them sinking into Swift's consciousness (p. 179). Whatever the mierits or shortcomings of Professor Bonner's attempt to link Dampier's work with Gulliver's Travels there remain a number of unanswered questions about possible "sources" in travel literature for various aspects of the Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World.

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Perhaps it may be well to start with Swift's little people and his giants, of whom there are none in Dampier. There are, however, three very short accounts of pygmies, none of them similar to the Lilliputians, in Purchas's collection and eight accounts of giants. Certain voyagers, for example, "descryed seven Canoes of wilde men, of ten or eleven foot as they conjectured in stature" (II. 208-09). But the most detailed account of giants appears in an excerpt from Magellan's voyages, and here, as throughout Purchas, marginal words in italic type prepare the reader for the text. On pages 86-89 of the second volume of Purchas these marginal notations are to Cannibal Giants, Giants, The bignesse of the Giants, Another Giant, Foure other Giants, Two Giants are taken by a policie, and The Giants feeding. Elsewhere in Purchas one finds "The Iland of Giants" (XV. 212). Magellan gave one of the giants "certaine Hawkes Bells, and other great Bells, with a Looking-Glass, a Combe, and a payre of Beads of Glasse" (II. 87); in the fouth voyage Gulliver had about his person "some bracelets, glass rings and other toys, which sailors usually provide themselves with on those voyages" (p. 239), and thought to give the Houyhnhnms "two knives, three bracelets of false pearl, a small looking-glass, and a bead necklace" (p. 246). At the end of Sir Thomas Roe's Journal, Giving an Account of his Voyage to India there is a "Note of such things as Sir Thomas Roe would have sent him to bestow as Presents." The list is headed by "knives large and fair" and includes "some of the fairest Amber and Coral Beads" as well as "Looking-glasses" (I. 813).

Joeseph Acosta, writing of accounts of giants, warns that "we must not hold this of the Giants to be strange, or a fable; for at this day we find dead men's bones of an incredible greatnesse" and cites the discovery in Mexico of a tooth "as bigge as the fist of a man" (XV.238).8 It will be recalled that the sea captain who picked up Gulliver after his strange departure from Brobdingnag refused all gifts except "a foot- man's tooth" which was about a foot long, and four inches in diameter" (p. 152). This is, incidentally, only one example out of many of Gulliver's propensity to measure and weigh things, a propensity common to travel writers. Gulliver also says there "must have been giants in former ages" in Brobdingnag, a fact confirmed by "huge bones and skulls casually dug up in several parts of the kingdom, far exceeding the common dwindled race of man in our days" (p. 141). If, then, one seeks for a "source" for the Lilliputians and Brobdingnagians in travel literature known to have been in Swift's possession, that "source" is Purchas's collection.

While a number of scholars have exercised considerable ingen- uity in suggesting the origins or modes of formation of the proper names and words Gulliver encounters in the lands he visits, almost no attention has been paid to the other proper names, i.e. of the ships and the men on them. First of all, however, it should be said that his Englishmen bear quite ordinary names - Pannell, Williams, Burton, Prichard, Biddel, Nicholas, Robinson, WAelch - which help the air of specious verisimili- tude Swift wishes to achieve. These names arouse no suspicion. But since Swift introduces Master Bates, one may have his suspicions about

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Captains Wilcocks and Pocock. Robert Purefoy, whom Captain Gul- liver takes on as surgeon for the fourth voyage, is another matter, for I came upon the name in my research and then lost it.9 But the ships are more important. They are the Swallow, the Antelope, the Hope-well, the Royal Sovereign, the Adventure, and the Amboyna. Of these, only the Antelope appears in Dampier; the Hope-well, the Adventure, and the Swallow in Purchas and Hakluyt; the Amboyna in none-although the name Amboyna, a Dutch possession, was anathema to all English- men. The Royal Sovereign does not appear in any of these accounts. Ferdinando Cortez, mentioned in the last chapter of the fourth voyage (p. 319), figures in both Purchas and Hakluyt, if Swift needed to be reminded of him. (He is not mentioned in Dampier.) Don Pedro de Mendez, the courteous Portugese sea captain (p. 312), may owe his name to the two Mendez's in Purchas, and the port of Maldonada of the third voyage (p. 207) may owe its name to the three men named Maldonado in Hakluyt and the two so named in Purchas. The name incorrectly appears as Malonada on Gulliver's map (p. 177).

Much of Professor Bonner's case for linking Swift and Dampier depends upon resemblances between the fictitious Lemuel Gulliver and the famous buccaneer-author. Swift made Lemuel Gulliver a surgeon because his narrator, like Francois Bernier and Lionel Wafer, was not to be an ordinary seaman. Note, too, that Hakluyt's work was approved by "the learned phisitian M. Doctor James" (I.xxii). Many other voyagers, especially the Jesuits, were men of learning. Hence, Dampier's bookish proclivities were not unusual among these traveller-authors. Virtually all writers of travel literature felt it necessary to clear the air of certain preliminary matter and therefore wrote dedications or prefaces or both. Sometimes it was the publisher who wrote the preface. Almost invaria- bly the reader was addressed directly, as being good, friendly, curious, or something else laudatory. Hakluyt's preface to his first edition is addressed "to the Favourable Reader." As one-example of this mode of address Gulliver calls his reader "curious" four times (pp. 47, 54, 87, 110), but the reader is also candid, judicious, etc. Hakluyt, like all other narrators of tales of strange peoples and customs or editors of collec- tions of travels, claimed either to be utterly truthful himself or to have transmitted the words of others verbatim. What is more, in certain of the accounts in his collection, the "homely style wherin they were first penned" is preserved (I. liii-liv). He, again like others, maintained that the primary motive for undertaking these voyages, other than the "generall... desire in the youth of this Realme to discover all parts of the face of this earth" (I. xxxv), was for "the honour of our Nation" (I. xxxix, xl, xliv). When the primary motive was not patriotic, it was, especially with the Jesuits, religious, the desire to convert the heathen. And it should be noted, in the light of Lemuel Gulliver's "Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World" (my italics), not only that Hakluyt's title-page reads The Principal Navigations Voyages Traffiques & Dis- coveries of the English Nation. Made by Sea or Over-land to the Remote and Farthest Distant Quarters of the Earth at any time within the compasse of these 1600 Yeeres, but that in the prefatory matter in his

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first two editions he writes of "strange, remote, and farre distant coun- tries" (I.xxxii), of "searchers of the remote parts of the world" (I. xx), and of "the remote parts of the world" (I. lxx).

One must notice, then, the frequency with which some of these matters appear in the prolegomena to collections and to individual voyages. The long title-page of the first volume of Purchas reads in part "Voyages ... to and thorow the remoter parts of the knowne World." In his "Epistle Dedicatorie" Purchas writes of the "Beasts, Fowles, Plants of remoter Regions" (XIV. xxxvii); in his preface "To the Reader" he writes of "things in this kind remotest and rarest," of "Remoter Lands," and of "remoter Regions.""' He prays the reader to forgive the errors in the collection (XIV. xlvii), and appends "A Note touching the Dutch," which begins by stating that "the necessities of a Historie is ... to say the truth, all the truth (in just discretion) and nothing but the truth." Purchas does, however, admit to having omitted some "odious"matter and to having "altered and reprinted some more offensive general speeches" (XIV. xlix,l). The patriotic note is sounded strongly in the Epistle Dedicatorie to the Prince of Wales, for in the twenty books one may see "the English Martialist everywhere following armies, whiles his Coun- trey is blessed at home with Beati Pacifici; the Merchant coasting more Shoares and Ilands for commerce, then his Progenitors have heard off, or himselfe can number; the Mariner making other Seas a Ferry, and the widest Ocean a Strait, to his discovering attempts; wherein wee joy to see Your Highnesse to succeed Your Heroike Brother, in making the furthest Indies by a New Passage neerer to Great Britaine" (XIV. xxxviii).

In Richard Sympson's prefatory statement, "The Publisher to the Reader," he (that is, Swift) is concerned to establish the real-life identity of Lemuel Gulliver by some biographical details, to laud his almost proverbial veracity, to take responsibility for omitting much nautical matter and any possible mistakes that remain, and to confess that "the style is very plain and simple." In Book II, Chapter 1 Gulliver also mentions his veracity and style, writing that he has been "chiefly studi- ous of truth, without affecting any ornaments of learning or of style" (p. 90). Chapter XII of the fourth voyage is a kind of apologia, the chapter heading being especially full:

The author's veracity. His design in publishing this work. His censure of those travellers who swerve from the truth. The author clears himself from any sinister ends in writing. An objection answered. The method of planting colonies. His native country commended. The right of the crown to those countries described by the author is justi- fied. The difficulty of conquering them. The author takes his last leave of the reader, proposeth his manner of living for the future, gives good advice, and concludes.

Gulliver notes that "it is easy for us who travel into remote countries" to describe wonderful land and sea animals. In recognition of the fre- quence with which travel writers fell back on the word "remote", note

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the following in Gulliver's Travels: so remote a country, so remote a prince, a country so remote, countries very remote, England, which was remote from this country, a stranger from the remotest part, us who travel into remote countries, those remote nations." He is disgusted with the "many fabulous'2 accounts" found in "several books of travel" he had read in his younger days. His sole motive in writing was the "PUBLIC GOOD," and although it had been whispered to him that as "a subject of England" he should have "given in a memorial to a secretary of state ... because, whatever lands are discovered by a subject belong to the crown," he doubted that the English could conquer the giants or the horses. The Lillputians were not "worth the charge of a fleet and army to reduce them," nor would an English army "be much at their ease with the Flying Island over their heads." The British nation is commended for a number of virtues, and Gulliver repeats that he never once thought of taking possession in his sovereign's name of any of the lands he visited. In the appended "Letter from Capt. Gulliver to his Cousin Sympson" Gulliver-Swift protests the "very loose and incorrect account" of his travels and the omission of "some material circumstan- ces." He further protests the errors in the dates of his voyages, not only in the months and days but in the very years. Criticisms of his sea-language are brushed aside with the explanation that he learned it when young and now it has changed. And he ends with an angry defence of his veracity, stating that although a Yahoo, he was able, because of his two-year stay among the Houyhnhnms, "to remove that infernal habit of lying, shuffling, deceiving, and equivocating, so deeply rooted in the very soul of all my species; especially the Europeans."

Parallels with the prefatory matter in Purchas and Hakluyt have been noted; others follow. Francis Bernier's Travels in the Mogul Empire is one of the books Swift annotated. Bernier, like Gulliver, Dampier, and others, tells the reader on his first page that he was motivated by "the desire of seeing the world." Compare Gulliver's "insatiable desire of seeing foreign countries" (p. 75)13 and "the thirst [he] had of seeing the world" (p. 158)'4 which he used as explanations for undertaking his second and third voyages. In Bernier's dedication he confesses, "I cannot, however, doubt that it [his book] is written in a style devoid of elegance," and in his preface to the reader he says he provides a "Map of the Country"which is "less incorrect than others I have seen." In the same preface he states that he will provide "Facts and actual Occurrences," returning to the same matter in the text of the work where he says that his object is "to present a faithful account of the manners of this people" (p. 12). The patriotic, even chauvinistic, note is not missing, Bernier "reflecting upon the ease with which five- and-twenty thousand of our veterans from the army in Flanders, com- manded by Prince Conde or Marshal Turenne, would overcome these armies [of the Moguls], however numerous" (p. 55). The great Aureng- Zebe rebukes one of his instructors in philosophy for harassing his brain "with idle and foolish propositions, the solution of which yield no satisfaction to the mind-propositions that seldom enter into the busi- ness of life; wild and extravagant reveries conceived with great labour,

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and forgotten as soon as conceived; whose only effect is to fatigue and ruin the intellect, and to render a man headstrong and insufferable" (pp. 159-60). Gulliver writes that "controversies, wranglings, disputes, and positiveness in false or dubious propositions are evils unknown among the Houyhnhnms ... When I used to explain to him our several systems of 'natural philosophy,' he would laugh that a creature pretending to reason should value itself upon the knowledge of other people's conjec- tures, and in things where that knowledge, if it were certain, could be of no use" (p. 290). Earlier, in his account of that other limited Utopia, Gulliver wrote of the Brobdingnagians that "as to ideas, entities, abstractions and transcendentals, I could never drive the least concep- tion into their heads" (p. 139). The young nobles of the court show their skill and strength before the King (pp. 262-3); the candidates for high office in Lilliput perform on the high rope (pp. 24-5). The feet of the Emperor of Lilliput "press down to the center"; the "earth trembles under" the "footsteps" of an oriental monarch (p. 264). The latter two resemblances may seem superficial, but my intent is to point out what Swift may possibly have remembered, however dimly, from the travel literature he owned, and Bernier's work, it is worth repeating, was one of the three travel books he annotated.

Another of the books Swift owned was Lionel Wafer's New Voyage and Description of the Isthmus of America. In the preface to the first edition (1699) Wafer writes that he "cannot pretend to any great Exactness" but he has been "especially careful . . . to say nothing but what, according to the best of [his] knowledge, is the very Truth." And he asks "the Reader" to compare his account with that of other tra- vellers. Five years later, having added considerably to his first edition, Wafer felt it necessary to write a new preface for his second edition. The design of "this Second Publication," he writes,

being only to represent to the World how far it would be the Interest of England to make an Establishment upon that Continent; the Product of whose Bowels enriches the other Three Parts of the World. Because I am unwilling to weary the Reader with a tedious Discourse upon this Subject, I shall only tell him, in few Words,that if I plainly demonstrate the thing might be very easily effected, and that the Advantages that would thereby accrue to the Nation would more than answer their Charges, I think there will remain but little to be said against so Glorious an Undertaking.

That such a thing might be successfully performed by the English in this present Conjuncture; and that they would easily be able to maintain themselves in the Possession of that valuable Conquest, notwithstanding the greatest Efforts that the French could be able to make against them, can scarce be well denied by any Man that will be at thepains to consider, that we being vastly Superiour to them by Sea, whatever number of Landforces they might be in a condition to spare from Europe, 'tis our own Fault if even they transport them thither. And as to the number of Men that such an Expedition would require of us, considering the favourable Disposition of the Indians (who are entirely our Friends) and the Weakness and Divisions of our enemies,

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the Spaniards, I believe it would not be so considerable as some People are apt to apprehend.

As a conclusion to this part of the preface, he adds, "I shall only desire all Men of Sense and Judgement to consider how much the Interest of England would be advanced in Europe by the Addition of the Spanish West-Indies, to their other Acquisitions in America." He reaffirms the truth of certain facts about the "White Indians" in his work, and so concludes his preface.

Wafer, who as a youth was "in the Service of the Surgeon of the Ship," later became himself a surgeon and even practised "for some Months" in Jamaica before going to sea again (pp. 1,3).'5His first voyage was on the "Great Ann of London, Capt. Zachary Browne Commander bound for Bantam" (p. 1), and it is a measure of the fidelity with which Swift imitated the very form of these travel narratives in their smallest details that he too writes of "the Swallow, Captain Abraham Bunell Commander" (p. 2) and of "the Adventure, a merchant-ship of three hundered tons, bound for Surat, Captain John Nicholas of Liverpool commander" (p. 75). On his second voyage Wafer's captain was willing to go "to the Bay of Campeachy, to fetch Log-wood," a commodity which "brought prices varying from £20 to £110 per ton in English markets" (p. 2 and n). Captain Gulliver, setting off on his fourth voyage, meets another ship "going to the bay of Campeachy, to cut logwood" (p. 237), a fact which Professor Bonner (p. 165) makes much of, because Dampier devotes much space to his two voyages to Campeachy and to the matter of "logwood-cutting." But, as Professor Bonner admits, one cannot be sure that Swift read Dampier's Voyages and Descriptions in which the Campeachy expeditions are described, as he is only known to have possessed Dampier's New Voyage Round the World. In any event, logwood cutting at Campeachy was a commonplace of travel literature. Wafer describes monkeys "pissing down purposely on our Heads" (p. 66), and one can hardly forget how several Yahoos "leapt up in the tree, from whence they began to discharge their excrement on [Gulliver's] head" (p. 241). The Houyhnhnms, Gulliver tells us, "calcu- late the year by the revolutions of the sun and moon, but use no subdivisions into weeks" (p. 297); Wafer, describing the Cuna Indians, observes "among them no distinction of Weeks or particular Days.... They reckon Times past by no Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies, but the Moons" (p. 105). So, too, do the Lilliputians, for Reldresal, the Principal Secretary, telling Gulliver of past history, speaks of "seventy moons past" and "six and thirty moons past" (pp. 35-6, 37). Finally, Wafer wrote a secret report to the Duke of Leeds, a nobleman "probab- ly ready to promote profitable British enterprises in the West" (p. 133 and n.). The report is a detailed account of how the English could profit by trade in the West. Gulliver, it will be remembered, was remiss in not having "given in a memorial to a secretary of state" at his first coming over (p. 319). Sir Paul Rycaut, whose Present State of the Ottoman Empire Swift owned, writing in his dedication of his "Travels ... in those remote parts, assures the Reader in an Epistle that he presents "a

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true System or Model of the Turkish Government and Religion," and ends that Epistle on a strongly patriotic note.

If the Voyage de Syam Swift was reading in 1697 or 1698 was the Abbe de Choisy's Journal du Voyage de Siam, he might later have remembered or referred back to the short prefatory statement of "L'Imprimeur Au Lecteur" when he wrote his own prefatory "The Publisher to the Reader." De Choisy's publisher explains how the series of letters from de Choisy to his friends came to be published.

Voici, Lecteur, un Journal du voyage de Siam. Ce sont des lectures familieres ecrites i un ami sans aucune intention que le public en entendist jamais parler.

Mais ayant este assez heureux pour les recouvrer, j'ai represente a celui qui les a ecrites, que puisque j'en avais une copie, il pouvoit bien y en avoir d'autres par le monde, et qu'au premier jour il auroit le chagrin de les voir mal imprimees et tronqulees. Ces raisons l'ont touche: il m'a permis de vous donner ce Journal, et j'espere que vous le recevrez agreablement.

De Choisy immediately states his intention to tell what he has seen or to name his authority and to write every night so that what he has seen and heard will be fresh in his mind. "Je n'exagererai point: toujours devant les yeux l'exacte verite," he assures his friends.

The Voyages and Discoveries in South America, 1698, which was in Swift's library at the time of his death, contains narratives by Christoval d'Acuiia and other travellers. In Chapter 63 of Father d'Acuna's A New Discovery of the Great River of the Amazons, giants of "sixteen spans in height" are described. OED defines a "span" as a measure of length averaging nine inches, so that the good Father, claiming to have seen men some nine and a half to twelve feet in height, must be accused of some slight exaggeration. His narrative ends with a "Memorial pres- ented to the Royal Council of the Indies"in which he asks his Majesty, King Philip IV of Spain, not "to delay the occupation of this great river," enumerating nine benefits to be derived from such an occupation, the first being the conversion of the Indians. Again one recalls that Gulliver did not give in a Memorial to a secretary of state upon his return to

England from his various voyages. One scholar has shown that an account of a Dutch shipwreck

which Swift could have read in the Collection of Voyages and Travels, published in 1704 by the Churchill brothers Awnsham and John, has a number of details in common with parts of Gullivers Travels.'6 Now Swift could also have read the account in two French translations, but Byers, the scholar mentioned above, thinks it most probable that he read it in the Churchill collection. Actually, it does not really make any difference whether Swift had read the Churchill collection, for all one can claim for the similarities between Gulliver's Travels and the travel literature he owned or can be shown to have read is that Swift's "source" was travel literature rather than any collection or individual volume. And so it is that an analysis of the Churchill collection is here undertaken

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solely to underline the general nature of Swift's indebtedness, if indeed that word be not too strong. Thus, there are stories of giants among the inhabitants of Chile, travellers finding "Dead Mens Bones of Ten and Eleven Foot long, whose Bodies by consequence must have been Thirty Foot High, which is a Prodigious thing" (III. 78). One of the rivers in Chile was Rio de los Gigantes (III. 24). These must be added to the stories about giants already cited or mentioned above as not infrequent in travel literature. So, too, with mention of pygmies in the Straits of Magellan in the same account of Chile (III. 80). One feature of the Churchill collection absent from Purchas and from Hakluyt is the pres- ence of a number of prefatory statements, some by the authors them- selves and others by an unidentified editor. I take these accounts seria- tim. Dominic Fernandes Navarette, in his "Author to the Reader" prefixed to An Account of the Empire of China, vouches for the truth of his work in his first sentence, announces that the narrator of travels should be an eyewitness, and admits that he does "not question but the language is plain, and like a Man that has spent 24 years in studying strange Languages, and those very different from any in Europe" (I. cii). Gulliver says he spent his time ashore, among other pursuits, "learning their [the natives'] language, wherein I had great facility by the strength of my memory" (p. 2).

In an editorial "To the Reader" that precedes A Curious Account of a Voyage to Congo, In the Years 1666 and 1667 the reader is told that the author travelled to propagate religion and hence had no motive to be untruthful. They visited "countrys very remote" and their style is "plain and easy" (I. 612). It may be well to repeat that Richard Sympson observed that Gulliver's style is "plain and simple." In his "Author's Preface" to A Votya~e to Congo Father Jeroiim Ierolla da Sorrento vouches for the truth of his "short and imperfect" account, "especially which I have affirm'd myself to have been an Eye-witness of" (I. 653). John Nieuhoff's Voyages and Travels into Brasil and the East-Indes is introduced by an "Advertisement to the Reader" written by the author's brother, who saw to the publication of the manuscript. In a brief biographical sketch he states that his brother was not afflicted with "that Disease, so incident to Travellers, to Relate Fables instead of Histories" and that "as he delighted in Travelling, so he was thereby become Master of divers Languages" (II. a2 - ). In the light of previous discus- sion about the Yahoos and the Hottentots it should be noted that Nieu- hoff devotes some four folio pages to the latter, describing how they "devour raw pieces of flesh or carrion, as greedy as dogs" (II. 187), and the women as having "long breasts ... and when they are suckling their Infants, [they] hang backwards over their shoulders" (II. 188). Compare Gulliver on the Yahoos: "their undistinguishing appetite to devour every thing that came in their way, . . . the corrupted flesh of animals" and "if their prey held out, they would eat till they were ready to burst" (p. 283). The "dugs" of the female Yahoos "hung between their fore-feet, and often reached almost to the ground as they walked" (p. 240). Nieuhoff also observes that the Hottentots "kill no Cattle except it should be rendered useless by Sicknesse or Age" (II.187); the Yahoos "now and

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then [eat] a cow dead by accident or disease" (p. 247). Christopher Borr's An Account of Cochin-China has a "To the Reader" which gives the propagation of Christianity as the prime reason for the voyage, assures the reader that he will not be given "fabulous Accounts," and informs him that the author learned the Chinese language.

The "Translator's Preface" to Alonso de Ovalle's Historical Rela- tion of the Kingdom of Chile speaks of "that part of the World, so remote from ours" (III. A2r). And "those remote Regions" are mentioned in the "Author's Preface," in which the "the reader" is told that this is not a "Perfect and Exact History" but that the author can attest to the truth of wAhat he does relate (III. A3r, A3'). The editorial Preface to Sir William Monson's Naval Tracts apologizes for Sir William's language as that of one much at sea, does not think it "proper to alter the Stile," and admits to some mistakes and falsehoods in the work (III. 156). Philip Baldaeus, in his "Preface to the Reader," prefixed to his True and Exact Description of the Alost Celebrated East-India Coasts of Malabar and Cormandel, deprecates the "many fabulous Relations" to be found in books on the East Indies and states that he was an "Eye-witness" to what he relates (III. 563). The Preface to Dr. Francis Gemelli Careri's Voyage Rolund the World, describing him as "as man of learning and excellent natural parts," states that his is "a true Relation of what he saw in many Parts, where other Travelers had made it their Business to bring little but Fables and Romances" (IV. 4r). On the first page of the Voyage Careri writes of his "Desire of Travelling about the World" and of his "unpolish'd Lines," i.e. his rough style. The Account of the Shipwreck of a Dutch Vessel, which Swift is said to have known, has a Preface which describes the author as "a man of some learning," although his "Stile" is "so indiffer- ent." However, "there is nothing in [the work] that carries the face of a Fable" (IV. 608). 'The Account of the Cape of Good Hope and the Hotten tots by Henry Secreta de Zevoritz is given over almost entirely (INV. 834-45) to his description of the Hottentots, ending with a number of words in the Hottentot language and their English equivalents. He notes that "the Hottentots being very much Sun-burn't have generally a tawny skin" (IV\. 835). Gulliver described the Yahoos as having skins "of a brownl buff colour" (p. 240), a statement which NM. F. Ashley NMontagu compares to Edward Tyson's description of the skin of the orang-outang as of a "tawlny" color in an article entitled "Tyson's Orang-Outtang, Sive Ho mo Silrestris and Swift's Gulliver's Travels."l' Modern opinion favors the Hottentots as far-off progenitors of the Yahoos rather than the orang- outang, the former being nmuch more written about than the latter. Zevoritz writes of the Hottentots that their "want of Knowledge and true V'irtue, makes them prone to all manner of Vrices, as Levity, Inconstancy, Lust, Deceit, Perfidiousness, and most shameful Debaucheries" (IV. 837-8). In chapters \'II and VIII of the fourth voyage Gulliver describes the Yahoos at length, declaring them to he "cunning, malicious, treacher- ous and revengeful" (p. 288). Others of their vices - greed, lust, deceit- fulness, gluttony, pandering - are illustrated in the master Houyhnhnm's comparison of the Yahoos with the English.

Among the other passages Swift might have remembered from

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the Churchill collection, if indeed he had read it, might be Columbus's statement that men making "sea charts" without "having seen the World" make "vast Mistakes" (II. 663), for Gulliver is confirmed in his suspicion that the "maps and charts place this country [New Holland] at least three degrees more to the east than it really is" (p. 309). The formal salutation established for greeting the King of Luggnagg is "May your Celestial Majesty outlive the sun, eleven moons and a half." This is uttered in a kneeling position after striking one's forehead on the ground seven times (pp. 221-2). In a description of China by Father Navarette, already quoted, one learns that those who are granted audience by the Emperor of China must kneel, strike their foreheads to the ground a conservative three times, and greet him with the words "may your Majesty live thousands of Years" (I. 22). Finally, it will be recalled that when Gulliver asked for safe conduct to Nangasac in Japan, he asked that the Japanese Emperor would "condescend to excuse [his] perform- ing the ceremony performed by [his] countrymen of trampling upon the crucifix" (p. 234). In the second chapter of his Voyage Round the World Dr. Careri states that the Dutch, to secure all trade for them- selves, advised the Japanese "to lay a Crucifix on the Ground at the Landing Place, to discover whether any Christian comes under a Dis- guise, because any such will refuse, or at least make a difficulty to trample on the Crucifix to enter Nangasache, the Port of Japan" (IV. 291). Gulliver determined to pass himself off as a "Dutch merchant, shipwrecked in a very remote country" (p. 233).19

Most critics are agreed that Gulliver's Travels satirizes, among other things, travel literature. One critic states that "in the first book he [Swift] obviously still had strongly in mind a burlesque travel book. That Swift should have written this burlesque in a simple, factual, and persuasive style rather than in a broad and ludicrous one is typical of him ... In the later voyages the burlesque travel book element becomes less and less strong, reappearing only sporadically when Swift could use burlesque touches with effect."20 I would correct those statements by suggesting that Swift occasionally parodies travel literature or is other- wise satiric at its expense, something far different from burlesque, and, even more important, that he everywhere uses the language, conven- tions, and the very details of travel literature as the vehicle for his satire of man and his institutions.

Most of the time Swift assumes his reader's familiarity with travel literature; at judicious intervals he becomes explicit. Thus in the latter category, Gulliver omits several passages lest he be "censured as tedious and trifling, whereof travellers are often, perhaps not without justice, accused" (p. 90). Travellers are wont to "enlarge a little" in their accounts (p. 113), to relate the great "difficulties and distresses they suffer" (p. 146), to describe what others have described before them (p. 232), to fill their narratives with discussion of what they ate and drank in the countries they visited (p. 250), and to boast of the favors bestowed upon them by great personages (p. 307). Since travel books have exhausted the extraordinary, his "story could contain little besides common events, without those ornamental descriptions of strange

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plants, trees, birds, and other animals, or of the barbarous customs and idolatry of savage people, with which most writers abound" (p. 152). As I have already pointed out, he defends his veracity at greatest length in the last chapter of the fourth voyage, rather immodestly boasting that he has "carefully avoided every fault with which common writers of trav- els are often too justly charged" (p. 319) and claiming to have answered "the only objection" that could be raised against him as a traveller, i.e. that he did not take possession in his sovereign' name of the lands he visited (p. 322).

Swift expected his readers to have read enough travel literature, then a popular genre, to catch the echoes of words like "remote" descriptive of countries, and of "fable" and "fabulous accounts," as that which most travel writers professed to eschew-usually in the inevita- ble prefatory matter addressed to "the reader" in which, while the style of the narrative is "plain," the writer is a man of parts and learning. The travellers' motives, other than the burning desire to see the world, are invariably patriotic or religious. They confess that their works may be incomplete or imperfect (or both), but in the interest of greater credibil- ity they provide maps, diagrams, illustrations, and examples of the alphabets or languages of the remote and far-distant quarters of the earth to which they have voyaged. These travellers, although they may "enlarge a little," conscientiously measure, weigh, and number the wonders with which they meet, and they are nothing if not punctilious in giving dates, hours, places of embarcation, with the names of the vessels, their commanders, their tonnage, and their destination. Lati- tude, longitude, weather, are a sine qua non, all couched in the best nautical jargon. If they had not been to the country of the Hottentots, they had lived with "white Indians." If they had not seen giants or pygmies, they had heard tales of them, or, failing that, they had encoun- tered strange flora and fauna, some transportable specimens of which they had brought back to their native country. They described manners and customs, laws, government, modes of life totally alien to Euro- peans. Armed with the Bible, or with baubles for the natives, or, liter- ally, with weapons, they sought out the remotest regions of the world. All this Swift knew very well when he wrote Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World.

Michigan State University

NOTES

1. Page references are to the edition by Arthur E. Case (New York, 1938). 2. Harold Williams, Dean Swift's Library. With a Facsimile of the Original

Sales Catalogue And Some Account of Two Manuscript Lists of His Books (Oxford, 1932), pp. 52 and 56.

3. See T. P. LeFanu, "Catalogue of Dean Swift's Library in 1715," in

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Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, Section C, Vol. XXXVII (1927), pp. 263-75, esp. 270-73.

4. See A. C. Guthkelch and D. N. Smith, eds. A Tale of a Tub (Oxford, 1920), pp. Ivi-lvii.

5. See John Byers, Jr. in JGEP, LVII (1958), 14-20. 6. See J. Leeds Barroll in PQ, XXVI (1957), 504-08. 7. See MP, XXIX (1931-2), 49-57. 8. See also XII. 83-4, XIII. 537, XIV. 514, and XVIII. 427 for other giants and

IX. 63, XIII. 513, and XVI. 263 for the pygmies in Vols. XIV-XXXIII, Hakluytus Posthumous or Purchas His Pilgrimes, in the Hakluyt Society's Extra Series. Subsequent references to Hakluyt are to Vols. I-XII of this Extra Series.

9. Nor have I found any Theodorus Vangrult (p.235) in travel literature. 10. XIV.xxxix, xlii, xliii. 11. Respectively, pp. 59, 137, 173, 220, 262, 290, 317, 318. 12. See infra for the use of "fable" by travel writers. 13. Page references are to the Oxford, 1916 edition of Bernier. 14. Compare Le Blanc's "obstinate Propension to travail" (Preface) and "noble

ambition to see the world" (p.1). 15. Page references are to the Hakluyt Society edition, Series II, Volume

LXXIII. 16. See supra, n. 5. 17. In the translator's Preface to Ludolf's history of Ethiopia, travel writers are

accused of "un infinite de fables." 18. PMLA, LIX (1944), 84-9. 19. John Dussinger, " 'Christian' Vs. 'Hollander': Swift's Satire on the Dutch

East India Traders," N & Q, N.S. 13 (1966), 209-12, accepts Leeds Barroll's assumption that Swift knew Kaempfer's History of Japan, and finds the source for the crucifix trampling therein. Twice Gulliver uses "trampling," as in Navarette; Kaempfer's account does not use that verb.

20. Charles Kerby-Miller, ed., Alemoirs of Martinus Scriblerus (Yale, 1950), p. 318.

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